OnTimeStats

Historical on-time performance

Nashville to Sacramento

1,917 miData through Dec 2025Source: US DOT · BTS

Flights on BNA–SMF arrive on time 71% of the time over the last 12 months.

On-time rate71%arrived within 15 min
p90 delay40 min1 in 10 flights is worse (tail risk)
Cancelled0.3%of scheduled flights

based on 318 flights over the last 12 months. On-time means arriving within 15 minutes (BTS standard).

By airline

How each carrier compares

  • Southwest Airlines
    On-time71%
    Medianon time
    p9040 min
    Cancel0.3%
    Flights318

Why flights run late

Delay causes

  • Airline31%
  • Weather4%
  • Air traffic (NAS)9%
  • Late aircraft57%
  • Security0%

Most delay minutes here are attributed to Late aircraft.

Over time

On-time trend

By season

On-time rate by month

When to fly

Best time to fly BNA → SMF

All airlines · rolling 36 months (2023-01 .. 2025-12).

Best time of day

On-time rates are fairly even by time of day on this route — ranging from 64% to 87% on time.

  • Mornings87% on time · p90 20 min · 98 flights · limited
  • Middays78% on time · p90 25 min · 219 flights
  • Afternoons65% on time · p90 45 min · 234 flights
  • Evenings64% on time · p90 40 min · 58 flights · limited

Best day of week

On-time rates are fairly even by day on this route — ranging from 63% to 79% on time.

  • Tuesdays79% on time · p90 25 min · 75 flights · limited
  • Mondays76% on time · p90 40 min · 79 flights · limited
  • Wednesdays76% on time · p90 25 min · 74 flights · limited
  • Saturdays74% on time · p90 40 min · 145 flights · limited
  • Fridays72% on time · p90 50 min · 79 flights · limited
  • Thursdays70% on time · p90 40 min · 79 flights · limited
  • Sundays63% on time · p90 45 min · 84 flights · limited
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Methodology

A flight is on time when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule — the US DOT / BTS standard. Median and p90(the “1-in-10 bad day”) are read from the full arrival-delay distribution, never averaged across periods.

Figures cover a carrier’s own BTS-coded flights. Cells below ~200 flights are flagged as limited data. All numbers are pre-computed from public BTS On-Time Performance data.